A scientific breakthrough could make teeth fillings a thing of the past.

A new treatment uses an Alzheimer's drug to effectively "grow back" teeth.

It does this by boosting the generation of dentine, a substance which is naturally produced to protect the soft inner tooth pulp following trauma or an infection, but not rapidly enough to repair large cavities.

Currently, dentists use man-made cements or fillings, such as calcium, to treat these larger cavities and fill holes in teeth.

However, in a paper published today in Scientific Reports , scientists from the Dental Institute at King's College London revealed a way of stimulating the stem cells in the tooth pulp to generate new dentine.

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The novel approach could provide a more natural way of fixing cavities than fillings, which are prone to infection and often need replacing several times.

When fillings do get infected, dentists often have to remove and fill an area larger than what is actually affected.

Multiple treatments in the same spot can also lead to the tooth eventually having to be extracted.

One of the tiny molecules used by the research team to boost dentine production included Tideglusib.

This has previously been used in clinical trials to treat neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease.

Lead author of the study, Professor Paul Sharpe from King's College London said: "The simplicity of our approach makes it ideal as a clinical dental product for the natural treatment of large cavities, by providing both pulp protection and restoring dentine.

"In addition, using a drug that has already been tested in clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease provides a real opportunity to get this dental treatment quickly into clinics."